MANILA, Philippines - Once upon a time the world’s greatest fashion designers formed an extremely closed circle of nimble-fingered, white-coated craftsmen. Season after season in their tailor’s workshops they redefined Parisian fashion and worldwide trends. Hubert de Givenchy was one of them.
Born in 1927, at the age of 17 Hubert James Taffin de Givenchy left his birthplace in Beauvais for Paris, at a time when the couturier business was still passed on from master to apprentice. He learned from Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong (recommended by Christian Dior) and in Elsa Schiaparelli’s famous salons on Place Vendome.
Foreseeing relaxed chic and the democratization of luxury, which together marked the end of the century, in 1952 Givenchy launched “separates,” light skirts and puff-sleeved blouses made from raw cotton — previously reserved for fittings only.
Two years later Hubert de Givenchy was the first major fashion designer to present a luxury ready-to-wear line, Givenchy Université. More than any other, this was a designer who maintained close relations with his famous clients. No surprise there, he wanted to dress women. All women. From Paris to New York, Hubert de Givenchy’s fashions came out of the salons and down into the street. In 1953 one of Hubert de Givenchy’s designs was featured on the cover of Life magazine.
The best-dressed women in the world were keen to be part of it: Lauren Bacall, Babe Paley, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, Princess Grace of Monaco and Wallis Simpson, for whom the designer created special covers to preserve the Duchess’s envied orders from prying eyes. They were made in Windsor blue.
In 1953 Hubert de Givenchy received the wrong Miss Hepburn, because it was Audrey Hepburn, and not, as planned, the great Katharine, who arrived for a fitting in a tied-up T-shirt, tight trousers, sandals and a gondolier hat. The result was a relationship that lasted 40 years, with the Anglo-American actress playing the role of the designer’s ambassador, both off screen and on, in great classic films such as Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Funny Face.
Hepburn entered the circle of the world’s smartest women and Hubert de Givenchy’s fame spread worldwide. Together the designer and his muse designed a new kind of beauty: exhaustive perfection of lines, narrow hips, willowy body and swan’s neck. The Sixties’ ingenuous style was born chez Givenchy.
In 1957, Givenchy again made headlines by using Hepburn to promote his first perfume, L’Interdit. It was the first time that an actress had allowed her face to be used in perfumery. Success was enormous, with the American market immediately won over.
The information era made Hubert de Givenchy a superstar fashion designer — immortalised by Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, sketched by Rene Gruau and Christian Berard — his supreme elegance became in 1973 the ideal example for his men’s fashion line, Gentleman Givenchy. Even today that look remains a benchmark.
After retiring in 1995, Hubert de Givenchy was succeeded by young British designers: John Galliano (in January 1996), Alexander McQueen (in October 1996) and Julien MacDonald (in March 2001) — three fashion non-conformists, just like Givenchy when he first started. In 1956 he was the first designer to present his collections simultaneously to the press and clients. Half a century later the young bloods from over the channel have successfully taken up the baton, with their colorful shows still being written about extensively as they flatter a whole new generation of couture clients.
From December 2003 to end of 2006, it is the British tailor Ozwald Boateng who was appointed creative director for Givenchy Homme.
In March 2005 the Italian designer Riccardo Tisci was appointed creative director for the Givenchy Femme haute couture and ready-to-wear collections.
Pampered by his mother and eight sisters, Tisci has preserved the unwavering desire to recreate the tenderness that he received from women’s hearts. From the steep path that has taken him from the south of Italy to the perfumed salons of Parisian haute couture, via Saint Martin’s College in London, he would learn clear-sightedness, skill and discipline.
The designer draws on these same standards of excellence to twist the codes of the House of Givenchy, restrainedly playing with a palette of non-colors, grays, blacks, whites and beiges, set off with occasional flashes of ruby and topaz, to better outline a streamlined and uncluttered silhouette. The company’s flou and taileur workshops are put to the service of innovative haute couture, which Tisci translates with flair into graphic and structured ready-to-wear. Aristocratic and distinctive, sober and sensual, the Givenchy woman’s style reflects the path Tisci has taken: far-reaching. By avoiding the pitfalls of fashion and seasonal trends, Riccardo Tisci has tenaciously built a coherent, modern universe of Givenchy, firmly anchored in the company’s illustrious heritage, but determinedly forward-looking.
The Nightingale bag collection is Tisci’s creation and has been praised by handbag devotees and celebrities season after season. Each season, the fashion mastermind has reinvented the handbag du jour with new colors, sizes, exotic skins and textures to keep the luxe bag covetable. The latest Nightingale collection includes embossed crocodile, embossed stingray, “bubbled” leather, patent leather and marbled python skin.